>Big East lands a lucky 11 in March Madness

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March Madness is bigger this year. Better? Most of the Big East Conference thinks so. Colorado, Virginia Tech, St. Mary’s and a few others would surely disagree.
The unveiling of the NCAA tournament bracket on Sunday included an unprecedented 11 teams from a single conference _ the Big East _ and the usual number of snubs and disappointments despite the increase from 65 to 68 teams.
“It’s mind-boggling,” said coach Tad Boyle of Colorado, widely recognized as the most aggrieved of the teams left out. “Don’t have any control over it so we won’t whine and cry about it.”
Leading the way for the Big East was Pittsburgh, seeded first in the Southeast even though it didn’t win a game in the conference’s postseason tournament.
The Panthers (27-5) will need to win six in a row to cut down the nets at the Final Four in Houston on April 4, when America’s biggest office pool will come to an end.
“What we’ve done in the past is good, but it doesn’t mean a lot once you start playing in the tournament,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “We’ve got to go and play good basketball, and we’ve got to get better in these couple of days.”
Ohio State (32-2) of the Big Ten was the tournament’s top seed overall, with Kansas (32-2) of the Big 12 next.
Defending champion Duke aced out another Big East team, Notre Dame, for the fourth and final No. 1 seed.
Led by one of the country’s best guards, Nolan Smith, the Blue Devils (30-4) are trying to become the first team since Florida in 2006-07 to repeat as national champions.
The tournament looks different this year, thanks to the addition of three more at-large teams that will open play in the “First Four” on Tuesday and Wednesday. Two of those games pit the last at-large teams to make the field _ UAB (22-9) vs. Clemson (21-11) and Southern Cal (19-14) vs. Virginia Commonwealth (23-11).
Those, along with every other game of the entire tournament, will be aired in their entirety on four networks.
Before the start of the season, TBS, TNT and truTV joined CBS in signing a new, 14-year TV contract worth $10.8 billion. The games used to all be shown on CBS, with the network deciding which part of the country got which games. Now, the viewers can pick and choose from all of them.
But all the added money and TV coverage doesn’t make the second-guessing go away.
As always on Selection Sunday, there were plenty of head-scratchers.
There were teams that surprised some people by getting in: VCU, UAB and Clemson.
There were teams that surprised some people by getting passed over: Colorado, Virginia Tech, Harvard, Alabama and St. Mary’s.
The St. Mary’s snub may have produced a first: A coach who prefers college football’s widely derided way of determining a champion over college basketball’s.
“As a coach, as players, all you want to know is that you’re given a fair deal,” Gaels coach Randy Bennett said. “You need to go by the numbers, exactly like they do in the BCS” _ the Bowl Championship Series.
Selection committee chairman Gene Smith of Ohio State said members investigated the resumes of the bubble teams as thoroughly as he could remember. Their investigation found there was room for five at-large teams with 14 losses; in the 26 years previously _ dating to when the bracket was first expanded to 64 teams _ there had been a grand total of six.
“When we were looking at those teams, there were a number of quality teams on the board that we had to consider, and we just didn’t have enough slots obviously for all the teams that were in, even though we had three more slots this year,” he said.
The Big East had no complaints. Nearly three-quarters of the conference made it _ another banner day for the league that was formed for basketball in 1979 and gets credit for helping transform the sport’s postseason into a three-week event that brings America together through office pools and the irresistible love of underdogs who sometimes hit it big.Last year, the ultimate underdog was Butler, the team from the 4,500-student campus that came two points short of beating Duke in the title game. The Bulldogs (23-9) weren’t as strong this season but still made the draw and will face No. 9 Old Dominion on Thursday.
Other interesting pairings include:
_Louisville vs. Morehead State, a pair of teams from Kentucky that must travel to Denver for their first game.
_UNLV vs. Illinois in a meeting of coach Lon Kruger’s current team against his former one.
_San Diego State in the same bracket as Michigan, meaning Aztecs coach Steve Fisher may have to face the school he left in controversy after he coached the Fab Five with the Wolverines.
_Notre Dame was a bit disappointed to receive a No. 2 seed, but has short trip to Chicago for its first game against Akron.
“I think we had a lot of argument for a 1, quite frankly,” coach Mike Brey said. “We’ve been on a pretty good run. Just erase the numbers now and look at the matchups. You take the seeds away from the teams’ names now, and you’ve got to go try to win a tournament in Chicago.”
The Big Ten placed seven teams, including a pair _ Penn State and Michigan State _ with 14 losses each. Led by freshman big man Jared Sullinger, Ohio State got rewarded with opening-week games down the road in Cleveland. The Buckeyes open against the winner between Texas-San Antonio and Alabama State, a pair of 16th-seeded teams that will also play in the First Four early in the week.
The Big 12 and Southeastern Conference got five teams each while the Pac-10 and Atlantic Coast only got four. The ACC list included the usuals, Duke and North Carolina, along with Florida State and Clemson, but not Boston College, which finished 20-12.
“I’ll put our top two against anybody. I’ll put our middle pack against anybody else’s middle pack,” BC coach Steve Donahue said. “But, yet, there’s 11 from one league and 3 1/2, basically, from another. I don’t see the drastic difference. I’m being honest.”
Of the 37 at-large teams, 30 came from the top six conferences and seven came from the so-called mid-majors _ the conferences that supply the underdogs and unknowns that have turned the NCAA tournament into what it is. The seven were one fewer than last year, even though there were three more spots available.
This year also marks the return of Big East tournament champion Connecticut, along with UCLA, Arizona and 2009 national champion North Carolina, a quartet of perennials that missed the tournament last year and led many experts to call the 2010 field one of the weakest of all time.
Some of those same thoughts are being echoed again this year _ and the teams that got left out are shouting the loudest.
“What I’d like to know is if there’s ever been a team that’s won nine games in the ACC and played the non-conference schedule that we played and beat a No. 1 seed and still didn’t get in,” said Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg, who has found himself venting for four straight years now on Selection Sunday. “I’d love to see the research on that.”

>Play-in games add to the madness

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This season, there are four play-in games for the NCAA tournament in Dayton, then the usual 32 first-round games, since those first-round games are now called second-round games. Confused yet? Since we’ll be at 32 by Thursday, here are 32 questions, and all the answers you need to know during March Madness.
1. Why four play-in games?
The answer to all such questions is always the same, $. The power conferences don’t want to lose lucrative spots to the little guys as new conferences pop up, so here is the compromise. Two of the play-in games in Dayton will be for the lowest ranked teams in the tournament, featuring a lot of schools with hyphens. The winners will enter the field as No. 16 seeds.
The other two games in Dayton will be for the last four at-large teams selected into the field. Those lucky four are USC, Virginia Commonwealth, Alabama-Birmingham and Clemson. Three of them would have been out if the format had followed past years, since three at-large spots were added this year. We’re guessing that Clemson would have been in, the other three out. It also appears that Richmond had to win the Atlantic Ten tournament to secure a bid, since they are a 12 seed.
2. One obvious drawback of adding more teams?
Now, it’s really hard to care about the teams left out. If you’re in the NIT, you belong in the NIT. Was Colorado really going to get to the second weekend?
3. What about ‘Nova’s seed?
Despite their five straight losses to end the season, the Wildcats earned their way in through a side door, not a back door, with their wins over UCLA, Temple, Cincinnati, Louisville, Marquette, and West Virginia.
4. Any chance they recover some confidence?
If the Wildcats can forget that they played the last minute of the Big East tournament like a bad CYO B team, they’ll prove their mental toughness. They also can go in with a chip on their shoulder, tired of hearing from everybody how they played like a bad CYO B team.
5. Last year, we downplayed the Big East, predicting no teams would make it to the Elite Eight. What about this year?
Kemba Walker is the best player in the country (sorry Jimmer, sorry Sullinger), while Notre Dame, Louisville, and Syracuse are all 40-minute tough and Pittsburgh still is the best of them. We’ll make no such predictions this season. Look at it this way, according to their seeding nine Big East teams are favored to make it to the second round. Say seven of them do it. I’d like a couple of those seven to win a couple more games and get to the regional final. Law of averages. Is any Big East team good enough to win the national title? Not sure about that. The law of averages doesn’t get you a title.
6. Kemba over Jimmer?
Sounds like a new cartoon series. We’d pay to see UConn play BYU to settle it. (It can’t happen before the national championship game.) Right now, there’s no doubt Kemba will be a better pro. However, the Jimmer Fredette show is the best show in college hoops right now.
7. UConn just won five games in five days. Will the Huskies have anything left in the tank?
The smart answer is to be wary. I’d rather be Pitt right now, fully rested and hungry. However, winning the Big East isn’t a bad way to go into the tournament. West Virginia did it last year and reached the Final Four. In 2009, Louisville got to the Elite Eight. Pittsburgh, a No. 4 seed in 2008 after winning in the Big East, was out in the second round. Georgetown made it to the Final Four in 2007. Syracuse lost in the first round in 2006 as a No. 5 seed. The bottom line isn’t very exciting: Big East tournament winners tend to play to their seed. If they scored upsets to win the Big East, it doesn’t mean they’ll pull off more upsets in the NCAAs.
8. The best teams, the Final Four teams typically have future lottery picks, right?
Yes, Butler was a Cinderella last year getting to the NCAA title game. But Butler had Gordon Hayward, who went No. 9 in last year’s draft. You want to win NCAA games, have the best players.
9. Who has the best players?
Ohio State has Jared Sullinger. Kansas has Marcus and Markieff Morris. UConn has Kemba. Kentucky and North Carolina are loaded with future lottery picks.
10. What about other guys?
Last year, Jim Clibanoff from Clibhoops.net told us about both Hayward and Fredette. Who are his under-the-radar guys with pro potential this season?
Keith Benson, Oakland, senior, post; Gilbert Brown, Pittsburgh, senior, guard; Festus Ezeli, Vanderbilt, junior, post; Kenneth Faried, Morehead State, senior, forward; Justin Harper, Richmond, senior, forward; Kahwi Leonard, San Diego State, sophomore, forward; Nikola Vucevic, Southern Cal, junior, post; Brad Wanamaker, Pittsburgh, senior, guard. Leonard is a likely lottery pick, Clibanoff said.
11. Picking the chalk works?
No, it does not. In an NCAA pool we’re familiar with, there were 219 entries last year and only eight picked eventual winner Duke to win. One person picked eventual runner-up Butler. Only two people had Butler to reach the Final Four. (One had both Duke and Butler in the Final Four.) Nobody had more than two teams in the Final Four. Of the 219 entries in this pool, 126 had picked Kansas to win, and 191 incorrectly picked Kansas to win the Midwest region. In other words, the odds of winning the pool even if Kansas had made it were less than 1 percent.
12. Last season, we touted the following tournament teams as national leaders in field goal-percentage defense.
Florida State was No. 1, Kansas No. 2, Baylor No. 5, Temple is No. 6, Georgia Tech No. 7, Kentucky No. 8, Wake Forest No. 9.
How did they do? Florida State was a No. 9 seed and lost to No. 8 Gonzaga, so the stat was no help. Kansas was a No. 1 seed that lost in the second round to No. 9 Northern Iowa. Baylor did reach the Elite Eight as a No. 3 seed. Temple was a No. 5 seed that lost to No. 12 Cornell in the first round. Georgia Tech pulled off one upset as a No. 10 seed, beating No. 7 Oklahoma State before losing to No. 2 Ohio State. Kentucky was the top seed in the East Regional but lost to No. 2 West Virginia in the regional final. As a No. 9 seed, Wake Forest beat No. 8 Texas before losing to Kentucky. Bottom line: field goal-percentage defense doesn’t tell you about how teams play defense in a particular matchup.
13. What about free-throw percentage?
Coincidently or not, those teams played generally well. The top foul-shooting teams in this year’s tournament: Wisconsin was No. 1, Bucknell No. 3. Nobody else in the top 10 made the tournament.
14. Making free throws is great, especially if you have the lead, but who are the top scorers?
Jimmer is tops. Fredette led the nation with 28.5 a game. Kemba Walker is next best at 23.5 a game. Northern Colorado’s Devon Beitzel is the third best scorer at 21.4 ppg., while Duke’s Nolan Smith, another future pro, is the fourth best at 21.3 ppg. Cal-Santa Barbara’s Orlando Johnson is at 21.1 ppg.
15. You want more scorers?
Others averaging at least 20 a game are JaJuan Johnson of Purdue, Tu Holloway of Xavier, Noah Dahlman of Wofford and Talor Battle of Penn State.
16. What’s the biggest seeding surprise?
Kentucky is a No. 4 seed after beating Florida in the SEC final, while Florida is a No. 2 seed? Yes, Florida finished three games ahead of Kentucky in the league, but also lost two of three this season to UK, including by 16 points on Sunday. The selection committee must not have had time to process that. Kentucky has won eight of nine and hasn’t lost a game by more than two points since Jan. 8. Florida seems like a “somebody has to be a 2 seed” kind of 2 seed.
17. Who are the lower seeds who can win right away?
With all the warranted attention on BYU and San Diego State from the Mountain West, WAC champion Utah State lost just three games, all on the road, and lost by only six at BYU. Old Dominion, facing Butler, is used to winning and capable of getting to the second weekend. In November, Old Dominion beat Clemson and A-10 regular-season champ Xavier on back-to-back days in a tournament in the Virgin Islands.
18. Another downside to format change?
A couple of teams that once would have been No. 15 seeds now fall to 16. In other words, under the old format, BU would have been a No. 15 seed, playing a No. 2 seed, and at least 2 seeds have gone down in upsets. Top seeds don’t go down.
19. What about Temple?
The Owls need to win an NCAA game to put a stamp on the whole Lavoy Allen era, right?
Can’t argue with that. Last season, Temple had bad luck in catching a bad matchup in the first round in Cornell. The first 10 minutes Penn State will be huge or the rim will start getting small on the Owls. In their last 19 games, the Nittany Lions haven’t scored more than 66 points, so it won’t be a shootout. It should, in fact, be as competitive as the seeds predict.
20. Locals to look for?
The best of them are mostly on two teams – Marcus and Markieff Morris from Prep Charter are the top performers for top-seeded Kansas. Rick Jackson and Scoop Jardine from Neumann-Goretti lead Syracuse. And Brad Wanamaker, Roman Catholic, is another tough Philadelphia product at Pittsburgh.
You want locals,
22.Other locals?
In addition to all the Temple and Villanova locals, Chester High graduate Nasir Robinson starts at Pitt with Wanamaker. . . . Bucknell has productive freshman Cameron Ayers from Germantown Academy and top defender Bryan Cohen from Abington Friends. . . . Penn State freshman Andrew Jones, another Abington Friends product, starts for the Nittany Lions. . . . West Virginia has former Pennsbury star Dalton Pepper coming off its bench. . . . Syracuse also has top reserve Dion Waiters from Philly. He is Jardine’s cousin and a Life Center Academy graduate. . . . Chris Burke from Willingboro comes off the St. Peter’s bench. . . . Roman Catholic graduate Koron Reed is a Hampton reserve.
23. Which local has been on TV all week in the highlights?
Princeton guard Douglas Davis denied Harvard with his game-winner. He’s a local. Davis finished high school at the Hun School (N.J.) after playing with the Morris twins at Prep Charter.
24. Back to B.U.
Do the Terriers have any good precedent on their side? Indeed they do. Matt Griffin doesn’t have to look outside his own house to find it. Five years ago, his older brother John was on the Bucknell team that upset the Jayhawks.
25. Even if you hate Duke, name the Duke player who is difficult to hate?
Find something, anything, not to like about Blue Devils guard Nolan Smith, the son of the late former Sixers player Derek Smith. You can’t do it, with either his game or his personality. If Kyrie Irving hadn’t gotten hurt, the Blue Devils would be big favorites to repeat. You still can’t count them out.
26. What are the odds that having the national player of the year wouldn’t be the biggest story of March at BYU?
Prohibitive, except it’s BYU. Losing an important starter for failing to meet Mormon guidelines will really put the focus on the Cougars. Of course, Jimmer looks kind of oblivious to pressure. BYU-St. John’s would be a terrific third-round matchup out of Denver. The Jimmer Show could be a ratings bonanza if the Cougars get to the second weekend.
27. Temple isn’t the only local going to Tucson?
Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan, a Chester High graduate, takes the Badgers there, taking on Belmont in one of those bracket-upset specials.
28. Heard Thursday at the Big East tournament?
“Higgins and Burr can still work, but not together.” The New York columnist was talking about referees Tim Higgins and Jim Burr, who combined for that complete epic officiating fiasco at the end of the St. John’s-Rutgers game.
29. Speaking of St. John’s, when did Steve Lavin become such a good X’s and O’s coach?
When he was smart enough to hire Mike Dunlap as an assistant. Many coaches will tell you Dunlap is pretty close to a basketball genius.
30. What guys would still be seniors in college if they had stayed four years?
This class is just amazing, the best to leave high school in years. . . . Start with Derrick Rose, a favorite for NBA MVP. Add NBA leading rebounder Kevin Love and dunk champion/future Olympian Blake Griffin. More? Eric Gordon, O.J. Mayo, Evan Turner, Michael Beasley, Jonny Flynn.
31. Who wins the Southeast?
None of the top seven seeds won their conference tournament, so this one is wide open, especially if you’re not picking Pittsburgh in your pool until the Panthers actually get to a Final Four.
32. Who will win?
Kansas has a far better draw in the Southwest than Ohio State, which might have to get past Kentucky and then North Carolina in the East. So we’ll pick Kansas as the favorite, but take John Calipari’s future pros in our pool.

>Four lessons to take from the first Saturday in March

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1. Thank North Carolina for putting the bracket more in flux — and giving us some serious intrigue on the top lines heading into Championship Week. 

Ohio State and Kansas should be considered near-locks for the first two No. 1 seeds, and Duke would’ve been in good shape had it swept the Heels and won the ACC regular-season title. But now there are four teams — Pitt, Duke, Notre Dame and BYU — fighting for the final two No. 1s.

Pitt is in excellent shape, having captured the Big East regular-season title by grinding out a win over Villanova on Saturday. The only thing stopping the Panthers from being a total lock is that they lost two of their last five and only have one quality out-of-league win (over Texas). One Big East tourney win should do the trick. The Irish have even more at stake at Madison Square Garden, as they could make a run at a No. 1 by winning the whole thing, or even just reaching the finals. They have a killer résumé, with 10 top-50 RPI wins (including Pitt, Wisconsin, Georgetown and UConn twice) and zero bad losses. Duke meanwhile, needs to win the ACC tourney to feel truly safe as a top seed.

And what about BYU? Conventional wisdom, following this week’s suspension of Brandon Davies and the ugly loss to New Mexico, was that the Cougars no longer had a shot at a No. 1 and might not even earn a No. 2. But they righted the ship to rout a bad Wyoming team on Saturday, and what if they dominate the Mountain West tournament in much the same way they did the regular season, sending a message that the loss of Davies isn’t actually a big deal? BYU would be No. 3 in the RPI and own a sweep of the No. 4 RPI conference. If that’s the case, it would have to receive the top seed and placement in Anaheim.

2. These three teams had the worst days on the bubble:

• Baylor. That home loss to Texas put the Bears off the bubble and into the NIT. Their résumé (RPI in the 70s, with two wins over Texas A&M and nothing else) is terrible, and they lost four of their last five heading into the Big 12 tourney. They’ll need to pull off a miracle to get the league’s automatic bid.

• Michigan State. The consensus among the preeminent bracketologists — Andy Glockner and the like — is that the Spartans are still in the Field of 68 after Saturday’s loss to Michigan. But how safe are they, really? I’m worried about them if they don’t win two games in the Big Ten tournament. They’re 16-13 overall and 9-9 in the league, with one great win (over Wisconsin) on their résumé.

• Virginia Tech. Speaking of teams with weak résumés clinging to one good win … the Hokies are once again on shaky ground heading into the ACC tournament. Saturday’s loss at Clemson moved them to 19-10 and 9-7 in the ACC with an RPI in the high 60s. They have zero quality out-of-conference wins, one decent league win over Florida State and one big win over Duke — that’s it.

3. These three teams had the best days on the bubble:

• Butler. The Bulldogs aren’t a lock to make the field after Saturday’s win over Cleveland State in the Horizon League semifinals, but they do now have four wins over top-50 RPI teams (Florida State and Cleveland State three times), and have closed the season on an eight-game win streak. I think they’re in as a 12 seed, potentially in one of the Dayton “First Four” games. And if it does come down to Butler vs., say, Georgia for one of the last spots, you wonder if the fact that the Indy kids were in last year’s title game and were darlings of last year’s tournament will matter. The committee will certainly say it doesn’t matter at all … but you still wonder.

• Michigan. The Wolverines still have work to do, but Saturday’s win over Michigan State gave them a sweep of the Spartans, a .500 record in the Big Ten and at least a fighting chance of earning a bid if they beat Illinois in the 4/5 game of the conference tourney. Only if they win two games in Chicago, though — and that would require an upset of Ohio State — are they a lock.

• Alabama. The Crimson Tide are shaping up to be the most curious bubble case — they’re 12-4 in the SEC after beating Georgia on Saturday, but their RPI is in the high 80s and their out-of-league résumé is so laughable that the best win is over Lipscomb. Will the committee really exclude the team with the second-best record in a power conference?

4. At 30-4 and 19-1 in the Atlantic Sun, Belmont has done enough to earn a 13 seed — rather than the 15 or 16 its league winner typically gets in the NCAAs. If the Bruins are properly seeded, they’ll be by far the best upset pick in the 4/13 games.

Take a look at Belmont’s efficiency, adjusted for competition, in the context of five other candidates for 13 seeds from current bracket projections (data from kenpom.com):

13 seed AdjOffEff (Rk.) AdjDefEff (Rk.) EffMargin/100P

Belmont 111.5 (41) 91.0 (22) +20.5

Charleston 112.3 (35) 102.0 (177) +10.3

Oakland 114.2 (22) 102.9 (200) +11.3

Princeton 103.9 (121) 96.1 (68) +7.8

Missouri St. 111.0 (47) 101.2 (157) +9.8

None of the other potential 13s are even close. Belmont’s efficiency margin ranks 24th nationally, thanks to a decent offense and a stifling, high-turnover-percentage D. Now, consider Belmont in the context of potential four seeds’ efficiency profiles:

Four seed AdjOffEff (Rk.) AdjDefEff (Rk.) EffMargin/100P

Syracuse 114.4 (21) 89.9 (16) +24.5

UNC 111.3 (44) 87.2 (4) +24.1

Louisville 110.7 (49) 87.7 (6) +23.0

Florida 114.4 (20) 92.5 (39) +21.9

UConn 112.4 (34) 91.9 (31) +20.5

St. John’s 111.2 (46) 92.2 (34) +19.0

Belmont is actually more efficient than St. John’s and even with UConn, which means Vegas might consider favoring the Bruins on a neutral court. Considering that these margins are per 100 possessions, and the average game is in the 60s, Belmont is theoretically within one possession of Syracuse, UNC, Louisville and Florida as well. The Bruins wouldn’t need a massive stroke of luck to upset those teams — they’d just need one or two more shots to fall than normal.